Current product marking schemes provide only limited information about the identity of a particular package of merchandise. As a result, it is difficult, using only information on the package, to trace mass market products to a particular source. It is even more difficult to trace the path taken by a package of merchandise through the supply chain from a manufacturer, through a chain of distributors, to a retailer.
Programmable transponders, such as RFID tags, have sufficient storage capacity to uniquely identify a package of merchandise. Such transponders offer the potential of marking mass-produced packages of merchandise with unique identifiers. The ease with which such transponders can be interrogated has the potential to render practical the task of tracking a package of merchandise through the supply chain.
For programmable transponders to realize this potential, they must first be affixed to the packages. To avoid introducing a bottleneck in the manufacturing process, they must be affixed to packages at line speeds. Although there exist devices for marking packages at line speeds, these devices tend to place identical markings on each package of merchandise. There is no requirement, in such marking devices, for marking merchandise units with information that changes from one unit to the next, and to do so while still maintaining line speed.